Maria Eliza Garza, Houston, Texas, has pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud seven different Houston-area banks of more than $2 million in 2007 and 2008.
Peter Wilkinson, Eugene, Oregon, was sentenced on September 3, 2013, for his role in a mortgage fraud scheme involving the submission of false and misleading loan packages to lenders.
R.A. North Development, Inc., R.A., North Development, LLC, Southeastern Waterfront Marketing, Inc., William Garith Allen, Randolph M. Allen, R Douglas Therrell, Kenneth Bednar, and Michael Woolard are the subjects of a consent judgment for their roles in a real estate scam.
Sember Lynn Smathers, 49, formerly of Shelby, North Carolina, a former real estate agent, pleaded guilty on Monday, August 26, 2013, to selling household appliances she unlawfully removed from vacant homes owned by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Ralph John Solis, Hemet, California, was sentenced to 15 years in state prison and ordered him to pay more than $12.6 million in restitution to the victims of a real estate Ponzi scheme he operated.
George Christo George, 54, Las Vegas, Nevada, has been charged with defrauding Northern Nevadans in real estate and mortgage scams.
Kathleen Niew, 57, Burr Ridge, Illinois, an attorney who operated Niew Legal Partners LLC and whose law license was suspended in May 2013, was arrested on federal fraud charges for allegedly misappropriating approximately $2.34 million from a husband and wife who were her clients.
Theresa Sanders, a/k/a Theresa Hayes, 55, most recently of Westerville, Ohio, an attorney, Tracie Clark, 41, Wimauma, Florida, Michelle Powers, 51, DeRuyter, New York, an attorney, Steven Essig, 60, an appraiser, and Paul Sakowski, 44, both of Syracuse, New York, have been indicted for their roles in a mortgage fraud ring that operated for years and netted more than $1 million by preying upon first-time home buyers and institutional lenders.
The five defendants bilked consumers by advertising a rent-to-own opportunity in which first-time home buyers with low credit were offered the chance to own their own homes with no down payments and no closing costs. The accused then took out fraudulent loans against those properties, conned lenders into believing they were paying off underlying mortgages, and then pocketed the money. Continue Reading…
Frederick Tropeano, 47, Holmdel, New Jersey, was sentenced to 12 years with a five year, ten-month period of parole ineligibility, in a New Jersey state prison after he admitted he laundered millions of dollars through an extensive mortgage refinance fraud scheme bilking more than 40 homeowners in New Jersey and New York out of more than $7.5 million,
Alexander Iler, 39, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, a former attorney, disbarred from the practice of law in June 2012, pled guilty to charges of stealing real property from the estate of a deceased woman and embezzling money from his former clients.